


Enough

by regimusprime



Category: Spooks, Torchwood
Genre: AU, Crossover, F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-05-15
Updated: 2010-05-15
Packaged: 2017-10-09 11:25:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 15,687
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/86788
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/regimusprime/pseuds/regimusprime
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After his decommission from MI-5, Tom Quinn is at a loss for what to do with his life. His dad wants to take a trip to Cardiff to view the still in-progress Millennium Centre and that's when the weird things start happening and Tom's life takes a drastic turn towards the unexpected.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Distance

**Author's Note:**

> Takes place in the middle of Season Three of Spooks, shortly after Tom's decomm and well before Ianto joins the TW3 team. Warnings for alien happenings and rampant emo angst. Implied Tom/Zoe, but nothing explicit.
> 
> For the awesome cover art done for this fic, please see:   
> http://midvacent.livejournal.com/59698.html Thank you!
> 
> Many thanks to Rhi for the awesome betaing while I was working on it and for suffering with me while I turned this fic from an idea in my head to a reality.

For the first two weeks of his "retirement", Tom Quinn spent a good deal of time in his flat. The first three days, he functioned solely on autopilot, finding himself in his car on the way to Thames House before he remembered that he'd been rather abruptly decommissioned. Adjusting was the hardest part. There were times when he'd sit there staring at the numbers he'd stored in his personal mobile, wondering if the service had taken precautions to change them right away or if he was simply not seen as a threat until he did try to contact anyone on his team. Former team. Right.

He couldn't bring himself to erase the numbers from his phone even if they weren't in service anymore. They were a reminder that his past was real, had shaped him to this point and had shaped the people he'd touched as well.

There was the occasional message on his machine from Christine Dale. He didn't know how she'd found out about his fresh state of unemployment or the hefty pension Five had set him on. At first she just wanted to make sure he was okay, but Tom was certain that Harry was still listening even when she started hinting at something of a future between them. He could hear his former boss's voice in the back of his head, telling him to stop bollocksing his life up and to pick up the damn phone. He didn't. He wanted no more ties with the smoke and mirrors op that had nearly destroyed him completely. Even though he still loved her desperately, even though he knew she'd had no choice in the matter, she'd betrayed him. She'd thrown him to the wolves.

There were nights when he'd go down the pub after his self-imposed exile from the real world. Nights that blended together. Nights that didn't matter because he had more than enough money to afford to get utterly pissed only to wake up at noon the next day and count down the hours until he went out to do it again. Alcohol had always been a problem for people in the service, particularly agents in the field. He wondered if anyone had run some sort of study on how many people unceremoniously relieved of their security clearance managed to utterly destroy their livers.

It was three weeks before Tom decided that drinking was boring and that he'd proven to himself that he still had the liver of a university student so he could move on to something more interesting. He came to that conclusion in the back of a cab (Tom Quinn had never been thick enough to think that drunk driving was a good idea, even at his most self-destructive) when he realized quite suddenly that he had to urinate and that he was approximately a quarter kilometre away from his flat.

"Stop the car," he said to the driver. The driver dutifully pulled over and Tom passed the man the first two bills in his wallet before getting out, not even looking to see what they were, but well aware that they'd be enough to cover fare. The cab pulled away and Tom staggered drunkenly down the empty sidewalk. Perhaps he should've toughed out the last bit in the cab, he thought as he ducked into a downstairs doorway and pulled the incredibly sophomoric stunt of urinating on private property. At least it was a potted plant. Geraniums from the look of it. Malcolm said something interesting once about geraniums. Tom couldn't remember then for the life of him what it was. Possibly it was just crossword trivia.

He put himself away and zipped up his trousers to move back up the stairs to street level where he wandered towards his flat.

He missed Malcolm, he realized suddenly. He checked his watch, noting that it was only 1 am and any self-respecting intelligence analyst would still be awake pondering over the mysteries of the latest case. Tom was pissed enough that he decided then and there that calling Malcolm would be a good idea. He pulled his phone out of his pocket and it started vibrating just as he was about to flip it open. Without looking to see who was calling, he opened it and held it to his ear.

"Hello, you've reached Tom Quinn. He's not available to answer at the moment, but if you'd like to leave a message with his liver, we'll be sure to get back to you as soon as possible." It was funnier in his head. So funny, in fact, that he couldn't hold back a bemused smirk and a soft snort.

"Tom?" came the impossibly tolerable and almost pleasant (but not quite dulcet) tones of Christine's voice.

"Didn't I just say that?"

"Are you drunk?" she asked. Tom reflected for a moment that he couldn't remember what philosopher or psychologist or whatever had remarked that human beings had a remarkable ability to state the obvious.

"Not nearly enough," he responded as he finally turned up the path to his flat, fishing his keys out of his pocket. That whole keycard security thing had been abandoned when he'd nearly gotten himself blown up. Well Ellie and Maisie too, but clearly they didn't appreciate the IRA's shoddy workmanship nearly enough. Right. Christine was talking. "Christine Dale!" he said, completely cutting off whatever it was she was on about. He hadn't been paying attention anyway.  
He dropped his keys.

"You're up late," he commented. "You're retired. Shouldn't be up so late without good reason and you sound remarkably sober for someone being up at this hour."

There was a tense pause on the line. "Tom, I'm in Washington."

"Oh. Well it's still hardly standard business hours."

Another pause while Tom picked up his keys, lamenting the fact that he had so few now. Used to be that he was the king of all keys. Well, no, not really. But sometimes he felt like a right caretaker with all the keys jingling on his ring. He found the one for his door and once again realized that Christine had been talking and he'd completely ignored what it was she'd been saying. He tried to follow her train of thought.

"No," he said simply once he realized that either she wanted to come see him or wanted him to come see her. "Can't. Going to Cardiff tomorrow with my dad. Dunno what's in bloody _Cardiff_, but he wants to go and it's been ages since I actually spent time with him. Should do before he dies." He finally put the key in the lock and opened the door, pulling it back out of the deadbolt to shut the door properly behind him. He leaned back against it.

"Well when will you be back?" she asked. The exasperation in her voice was palpable.

"You honestly think I could stand being in Cardiff for more than two days?" he replied dryly. He closed his eyes for a moment, head hitting the door softly as he tried to motivate himself to move. Moving would mean that he could go get more liquor. It would also mean that he could go up the stairs to his room or to the toilet. Possibly the toilet first.

Christine was still talking. He'd lost track of her again. Somewhere in the back of his mind, that Harry Pearce voice was yelling at him again, telling him that he knew better than to simply fade in and out of a conversation like that. He'd been trained not to, after all, been trained to make it look like he wasn't paying attention at all when really he was memorizing every detail about the scene before him that he could. Seminars didn't cover what to do when you were stone cold drunk and not really wanting to listen to the person you'd had Relations with babble on about what was going on in DC.

"I have to piss," he said, cutting her off again. "Wouldn't be polite to take you with me. I'll call when I get back from bloody Wales." And without another word or even a grunt approaching goodbye, Tom Quinn shut his phone and pushed it back into his pocket as he lurched forward up the stairs to the toilet. He'd forgotten the reality of heavy drinking after university. Once you broke that seal on your bladder, you were in the toilet all night regardless of whether you'd ingested enough alcohol to make it seem like the ratio of piss to booze was even.

When he finished relieving the uncomfortable pressure in his organs, he washed his hands with the soap Zoe had gotten him after he'd finished being King Beggar. It was the first thing approaching reacceptance that Tom experienced after the whole Joyce incident. He laughed as the bar lathered in his hands, remembered her sheepish smile as she told him to take a proper shower. It smelled of cucumbers and melon and had been billed as relaxing or rejuvenating or something that both the Tom of the underground and the Tom on a healthy pension needed.

He needed Zoe too, he realized. If he closed his eyes he could still see her finally changing her mind to say goodbye to him, if even from a distance and without properly spoken words. He'd seen the look in her eyes. He could read her lips. Maybe if it'd been her instead of Christine, he never would've fallen into Joyce's trap.

As Tom crossed the corridor to his bedroom to strip out of his clothes and into pyjamas, he wondered if she was giving Adam Carter the same loyalty. He wondered if anyone on the Grid was missing him or if they'd all gone on like a great big rolling machine missing a non-essential and easily replaced cog.

He dropped the contents of his pockets onto his nightstand and stripped out of his trousers. He started to unbutton his shirt and caught sight of his profile in the mirror. The colour in his eyes was barely discernable in the light streaming in from the corridor, but there was an unmistakable ruddiness to his cheeks and a tiredness to his whole face. He was worn out, plain and simple. He paused in the unbuttoning process, hands hovering just over his stomach. He didn't want to know what he looked like beneath the dark blue cotton of his shirt. He didn't want to know what his change in diet had done to his waistline.

Morbid curiosity and drunken impulsiveness drove him forward. He finished taking off the shirt and hung the rough cotton on the bedpost as he walked to the mirror to study his body from the waist up. There was a slight bit of pudge over his pants, but that had been there for years and he wasn't particularly worried about it. After all, sit-ups had never been an issue for him. He was just destined to never be as outwardly toned as say, Danny. Probably Adam Carter too. Bloody Frigid Adam Carter.

If he didn't owe the man his life, he'd probably do something even more stupidly impulsive to the man's garden. Assuming, of course that Adam Carter had a garden. It was a logical assumption for him to make. Tom Quinn had a garden and therefore, Adam Carter would have a bigger garden. His brows pinched as he thought on his unfounded jealousy of his replacement. Unfounded, maybe, but completely natural. The man had saved him, but in the process taken his job and his team and now his friends and everyone Tom'd really ever known except his dad. Well, his dad and his crotchety old neighbour. Five forced you to disconnect from your old life and Tom's complete dedication to the service meant that aside from the few relationships he'd had which were both doomed to fail for various reasons, he didn't really know anyone anymore in the real world.

He reached forward and touched his reflection on the glass. He knew nobody and nobody knew him. His work had swallowed him whole and here he was, going down the pub regularly to drink by himself and not even attempting to pull. There were places he could go if he really needed to. He had the money to pay for it, but he wouldn't be able to cope with himself afterward. Hiring a prostitute was just one step further down the slippery slope to complete isolation. That and despite the regulations on the industry in London, Tom was not about to put any more money into it than was already there.

He didn't want a time-constrained rendezvous. He wanted to take someone home and lose himself in the intimate touch of another, to fall asleep in a mess of tangled limbs and linens only to wake up in the middle of the night to do it all over again and then to sleep all day curled up together.

He curled his fingers against the glass, surprised even as his body reacted to the desire for that kind of intimacy that was running through his head. The strange thing about the thoughts was that he didn't seem to care whom that body belonged to. He would've willingly found himself in bed with a man just as much as he would've a woman. That was a reality he'd deny to himself as soon as he was sober.

His pyjamas were draped over the footboard, but Tom ignored them. He slid under his covers onto his too large bed and stared up at the ceiling. He was half hard and contemplating the relative pros and cons of taking matters into his own hands versus rolling over and going to sleep.

He went for the latter. The former would be over too quickly and probably end up making him feel worse than he did when he started down his path to self-loathing. How pathetic.

Tom Quinn closed his eyes and rolled to his side, facing the inside of the bed, arm stretching out and draping where once Ellie had slept next to him. Thank god he'd never brought Vikki back here, that they'd always shagged at her flat instead of his. It was with that thought in his mind that he drifted off to a deep sleep full of dreams about radioactive cowboys and beautiful blonde women riding giant anteaters in the country. Thankfully, he wouldn't remember that when he woke up or he'd be questioning his sanity more seriously than he already had been.


	2. The Journey

The train ride to Cardiff felt like longer than it actually was, especially with the hangover and Tom's fervent attempts to not rudely ask what the hell they were doing going to Cardiff anyway. He wanted to believe that his dad just hadn't told him because the alternative to that was really too disturbing to think on. Tom Quinn didn't simply forget things.

"So," his dad began, interrupting Tom's bored stare out the window. He turned his attention to him, raising an inquisitive brow over his sunglasses. "How's work?"

It was a good thing he'd decided to wear those, because really the last thing he wanted his dad to see was the look in his eyes that question brought. That and then he could hide the obvious hungover state he was in. He could lie and say it was going fine, but he was tired of lying, tired of building his life on one untruth after another. "Took early retirement," he said simply, turning his attention back out the window.

"Retirement? You're not even 35 yet," his dad said, surprised, "and at any rate, it's not right for the son to retire before the father." He was teasing. Tom could hear it in his voice even if nobody else near them could. The gruff sort of headmasterly way that he poked fun without letting on to anyone without years of experience listening to him that he had any humour at all. Without looking at him, Tom knew that his mouth tugged just barely upwards at the corner. His dad reached out and patted his thigh. "Well, it's good that you're out of that line of work. First year you were there I was scared half to death every time the phone rang or I got an unmarked letter in the post."

Tom turned to look at his dad. "Do you often get unmarked letters?"

The older man shrugged. "Every once in a while. It's never anything worth worrying about. Not nearly as disturbing as the fact that Nan still sends your mum a card at Christmas and her birthday."

Tom winced, but understood the power of rituals. Nan was mourning in her own way. The fact that she'd been mourning for over thirty years was slightly disturbing, but he imagined that Nan didn't have long left either. God, when did he get so morbid? He studied his dad for a moment. "Does she still put a fiver in there?" he asked, unable to stop himself. There wasn't much money that had added up from his Nan's ritual donations to Tom and his dad, but what she did give went straight into young Tom's university fund.

"Oh yes," he replied, "still just as flat as ever, like she's got a whole stock pile of them pressed between the pages of books." Tom's dad did smile with that. A sad, tired sort of smile, but a smile nonetheless. "I've been setting it aside with the rest of my retirement savings. Thought for a while that I might just start sending them back to her, but I figure your mother would've wanted me to put it to good use and since you're out of school…" he trailed off, gesturing vaguely.

"It's ten pound a year, dad. I wouldn't worry about it." He doubted that Nan even noticed it was gone once she'd sent it. Should go out to Bristol and visit her, he thought and then frowned a bit while he wondered if she'd even recognize him.

"True enough," he said. He hit Tom's leg a little harder the way he always did when he was about to change the subject abruptly. Well, not Tom's leg all the time. Most of the time it was the table, but Tom's leg was the closest thing that wasn't actually attached to him. "So! Any ladies in your life?"

It always amazed Tom how awkward that question was coming from just about everyone one he'd ever heard it from. That included people in the pub trying to pull. He laughed, but couldn't keep the bitter tone from his voice as he remembered Christine and how she was sitting there when he was bloody ruined and wearing a goddamned wire the whole time. Maybe he should change his priorities in retirement to destroying Oliver Mace. Maybe. Except that would make him just like Joyce and that was not what he wanted to become.

"No, dad, no women," he said sighing.

"Or men? You know, it's okay if you are, Tom. This isn't the eighties anymore, it's okay." For just a moment, Tom was certain that his dad was absolutely serious. The span of a heart beat, really, long enough for him to take off his sunglasses and screw up his face in a strange mix of shock and horror. And then his dad burst out laughing. "I'm kidding. I know you're not like that."

_Like That_, there was a horrible sort of stigma attached to those two words, a kind of subtle judgment that Tom could only dismiss because his dad had grown up in a generation where 'like that' was as accepting as it got.

Tom rolled his eyes and put his glasses back on. "Sometimes I wonder how the boys put up with you," he said fondly.

"Simple. I'm not a nun." There was a comfortable silence for a few moments, punctuated only by the background noise of other people on the train. "What about that girl you worked with last time I saw you? Emily was it?"

Tom closed his eyes and let out a soft sigh. They both knew that Emily wasn't the name of anyone Tom trusted enough to let into his life even a little bit. Of course, Tom couldn't exactly go around with Zoe on his arm calling her by her real name. Emily had to do for the time being. "She's still with the firm," Tom said quietly, "wouldn't exactly be appropriate, would it?"

His dad was quiet for another moment. Tom could practically feel him thinking. "No. No, I suppose not." He patted Tom's leg gently, just above the knee. It was the only way he'd ever actually been affectionate with Tom. A comforting hand on the knee or the firm clap of it on his shoulder was about the extent of it. He had dim memories of being held as a boy, but those were faded and as far as he could tell, stopped when he was about six. He wondered how much of a different person he'd be if his mother had survived instead of his father trying to play both roles. There was no point in wondering if he'd be a different person, because of course he would. People were born of the things that influenced them. Having a mother would've changed a lot of things, especially if the stories he did have of his own were anything approaching reality and not glossed over with the attempt to not think on the bad things.

"Still," his father continued, "she was a nice girl. Pretty. Obviously liked you a lot."

Tom frowned. It'd been three years ago that his dad had met Zoe. His Aunt Bernice's third wedding. Tom needed a date at the last minute because he realized rather abruptly that if he went without one, he'd spend the whole time trying to dodge well meaning relatives trying to set him up with a girl who was just perfect for someone they didn't even know anymore. Zoe had played the part of the doting girlfriend perfectly. And that dress. Oh, that dress. He didn't know how she always managed to look fantastic without ever even trying.

"Call her," his dad said, interrupting Tom's thoughts of Zoe's cleavage abruptly. Good thing too, because he really didn't need to be thinking of the soft curve of her breasts as it related to the elegant line of her neck just then.

"Can't do that," he said, shrugging.

"And why not?"

"Because they've probably changed her number and if they haven't, they will as soon as she reports having had contact with me." He knew Zoe too well and was well aware that she'd at least tell Danny. For all the secrets within secrets that existed on the Grid, there were surprisingly few between those two. In fact, the only apparent 'secret' between them was Danny's blind love for Zoe. That wasn't particularly secret either since anyone looking could tell within the minute. Faster if another man was involved.

"Would they move her if you dropped by her flat? I mean you've already been," he gestured, meaning to say vetted, but not wanting to be so explicit in a public place.

"They wouldn't, no, but I'd certainly get an earful." At the very least. He didn't want to think about trying to keep the ties to his old life from being completely severed. That only led him to having to deal with Adam Bloody Carter and that…that would end with Tom punching the smug bastard in the mouth.

"Ah."

Tom turned to look at his dad, at the lines in his face and the few flecks of colour still in his hair. Their nose was the only feature they really had in common. Sure there was their hair and eye colour, but his mum's had been the same so that wasn't much of a surprise. And his height, but she'd been tall too. His facial structure was largely the same as his mother's and so looking at his father's aging face just then left him very few clues as to what lay in store for him.

"I'm not not looking, Dad," he said, reaching down to squeeze his hand slightly before letting go again. "I'll find someone eventually."

"Oh, I know. I just don't want you to be alone."

Tom managed a small smile and patted the top of his dad's hand before returning his gaze to what passed for scenery on the trip. Me either, he thought.


	3. Favours

The draw Tom's dad felt to Cardiff was apparently because of the still yet to be opened Millennium Centre. That was something Tom didn't get out of the man until after supper on the first night. They were talking in their hotel room. Tom's dad was reminiscing on the past, on his childhood dream of being an architect while Tom was gently needling, trying to get the older man to admit what the hell it was they were doing there. The sun had long since gone down, but neither man was tired or ready for bed when Tom abruptly suggested that they catch a cab down to the bay and go look at what was there. His dad hemmed and hawed for a few moments, coming up with halfhearted excuses while Tom got ready to go.

The Centre wasn't due to be open until late November at the earliest, which was still several months away. At least most of the work yet to be done seemed to be on the inside of the building. There were barricades, of course, but none that really obstructed the view of it.

Tom and his dad leaned against a rail overlooking where a few boats were docked. There was a small tourist shop just down the way. It didn't look like much and Tom wasn't interested in buying souvenirs from Cardiff. It was Cardiff. It wasn't likely to go anywhere. They stood there in comfortable silence, watching the water lap up against the sides of the boats. Tom hated boats. He always got terribly sick on the water, something he'd learned ever ago and managed to not have to deal with for years.

He brought his cup of coffee to his lips. He'd bought it partially out of the habit to buy a coffee (or something similar) when leaving a place so he wasn't just standing around conspicuously and partially because it was a bit colder than he'd expected. Just as the plastic top brushed his lips, a strong breeze hit and the temperature dropped. Tom just barely managed to keep hold of his cup with the sudden arrival of actual wind and just as abrupt departure of it. He registered the sound of a half-empty paper cup hitting the ground and rolling a bit as its contents splashed.

"Are you-" he began as he turned to see if his dad was okay.

Tom blinked.

In the place where mere seconds ago, his dad had been leaning with him, there was nothing. Nothing but the cup. There had been no sound. Tom's brow furrowed deeply as he looked around, but there wasn't a thing nearby that looked as if it were out of place. There were barely any people around as is, just a guy in a frock coat standing in the plaza.

Tom looked down at the water and then around again. There was absolutely no sign as to where his dad had got off to. It was like he'd just vanished.

The guy in the coat was still standing there.

Tom set his cup on a bench and walked over to him. "Pardon," Tom said. The guy turned to look at him, brows raised and somehow managing to look smug without having much of an expression at all. Tom had the sudden desire to hit him, but rationalized that by assuming that it was just misplaced aggression at the inexplicable situation he'd just found himself in. "There was a man, just there with me. My dad. He's gone. Did you happen to see where he went?" There, the most rational explanation for what had happened that Tom could muster.

"I didn't see anyone," the man said. American. Great. Just want Tom needed. Dealing with an American while in Cardiff where his dad's suddenly gone on unannounced walkabout. Disturbingly stealthy walkabout at that.

Tom frowned deeper and nodded with the man's answer. Was he smirking? Why the hell was this guy _smirking_ at a time like this? "Cheers," Tom said, getting a rather unnerving feeling from this guy. He backed away when all his instincts told him to press him for more information, that this guy was hiding something.

That was one of three choices in front of him. Press the creepy American for whatever it was he was hiding, call the police (useless), or ring Zoe and get her to do a favour for him.

All right, Dad, he thought ruefully, I'll ring her.

Tom kept moving away from the American, being sure to keep the man in his line of sight. Period military was not the wardrobe of a sane individual.

He pulled his mobile out of his pocket and scrolled through the numbers once he was sheltered in a gap between buildings. He stared at the entry in his contacts for a long moment, still peripherally aware of the American walking towards the shop. He clicked the button and held the phone to his ear, waiting for the inevitable notice that the phone was no longer in service.

Surprisingly, it rang. More surprising was the freeing laughter he heard when the call was answered.

"Will! Will, stop it!" came Zoe's voice, rich with amusement. Another peal of laughter came before Tom heard the distinct sound of someone getting up and could almost picture Zoe giving a mock stern look to some bloke on the couch. "Hello?" she asked, half breathless. He wondered if she was flushed.

"Zoe," he said simply, unable to shake the tone of voice that came with years in the service, years expecting her to follow his lead.

There was a tense pause on the line. "Yeah, hold on," she said, finally. He could hear her footsteps on the floor, the soft pad of bare feet, the way her breathing shifted when she was in motion. He waited. There was the soft click of a door behind her and the sound of the faucet being turned on. "What on Earth possessed you to call me, Tom?" she asked, the sharp whisper of her voice echoing in the bath. "Do you have any idea how many regulations you're breaking here?"

"I wouldn't be calling if it wasn't important," he said lowly, still scanning the area for any sign as to where the hell his dad had gone. "I need your help."

Another laugh. This time it was utterly humourless, the bitter timbre of someone who felt utterly betrayed. Tom knew how that felt. He'd been there.

"Please, Zoe," he said when she remained quiet.

The pause continued on. He could practically feel her debating whether or not she should just hang up the phone and call Harry to let her know that Tom Quinn couldn't leave well enough alone.

"Zoe…" His voice was pleading, as close to begging as he ever truly got.

She sighed. "What do you need, Tom?"

He closed his eyes and felt some weight lift off his shoulders. "I need you to go and get the CCTV footage for Cardiff Bay near the Millennium Centre between 23:00 and 23:30. There should be two men leaning against a rail looking over the water."

"What have you got yourself into?" she asked.

He opened his eyes again, looking at the plaza where the man had been. Tom leaned his head against the outside wall of the building next to him. "I don't know," he admitted.

"Right. And what do you need the footage for? Do you need IDs on these two guys?"

"No. I know who they are."

"Who then?"

"Matthew and Tom Quinn."

There was another heavy pause on the line. If it weren't for the water in the background, Tom would've been sure she'd hung up on him. "What's going on?" she asked again, voice laced with concern. She still cared. Well, that was something at least.

"I don't know," he said honestly.

She was quiet again. "Alright. Is there anything specific I should be looking for?"

"You'll know when you see it."

He could practically hear her rolling her eyes. "I'll be in contact with you tomorrow, then, okay?"

"Okay." It was his turn to pause. "Thanks, Zoe."

"You're welcome. I'm assuming you don't want Harry to find out about this little phone call?"

He laughed softly. "If you can keep it quiet, that'd be great." He wasn't going to kid himself. Harry probably was going to find out sooner or later anyway, especially after that business with Tessa and Sam.

"Okay. Tomorrow then."

"Tomorrow."

He hung up the phone and pushed it back into his pocket. Tom looked around again, making sure that there was nobody else around before he ducked out of his alcove and started his way back to the hotel. The temptation to go for a pint (or twelve) was strong, but he needed to be rested and alert for the next day. Too wired to sleep, Tom decided to walk instead of catching a cab. There was something very wrong here and he was damned if he wasn't going to figure out what the hell was going on.


	4. Reunion

Tom spent much of the next day wandering around the area where his dad had apparently disappeared. Only he couldn't have disappeared because that wasn't possible. People couldn't just vanish like that. They could be made to disappear with a bit of smoke and mirrors, but that wasn't what had happened. Tom was beginning to suspect that the American in the coat was involved somehow since he'd quite literally been the only other person around when the incident occurred.

When the incident occurred. God, he was still thinking like everything was a bloody case. The emotional disconnect might help some in figuring out what was going on. If he let himself think on the impossible thing that may or may not have happened right next to him without alerting his damn keen senses or tripping his gut instincts before it happened, well he'd be a mess.

While he was out, he kept checking his mobile, half certain that the phantom vibrations in his pocket were real and not just the fervent hope that Zoe would make contact soon.

The hours ticked by and he still hadn't heard anything. Not surprising given the nature of her job. She could be doing any number of things that took precedence over figuring out the mind-fuck that had become Tom's life.

He made it back to the hotel and was in the bath washing his face, about to give in to the need for sleep that tugged at him. He splashed cold water on his face and looked at himself in the mirror. His blue eyes were overtired, a state they happened to be in quite often lately. He wasn't finding the freedom he'd hoped he would after Five. He was just tired. It was like all the years he'd given the service, all the time he spent living so very carefully and on so much adrenaline had finally caught up with him.

He rubbed his palm over the stubble on his cheek.

Should shave.

In the morning.

He walked back into the room proper and looked over at his dad's things, untouched from where they'd been left the night before.

Tom was in the middle of taking his trousers off when the knock came at the door.

He frowned briefly.

He pulled up his trousers and redid the fastening and zip, moving methodically while he buckled his belt and padded in bare feet to the door. He listened for a moment, hand hovering near the handle.

"Tom, I can hear you breathing," Zoe said from the other side.

A brief bemused grin pulled at the corners of Tom's mouth before his hand closed around the handle, pushed down and pulled the door open. He couldn't banish the exhaustion from his face and really had no desire to put up a front for Zoe.

"Odd since I wasn't," he replied as he stepped aside to let her in.

She breezed into the room, capable as ever and clearly Tom was losing his edge because he very nearly closed the door on someone else who made a rather undignified and familiar yelp of protest. The movement of the door came to an abrupt halt with the combined efforts of a hand on the other side and Tom stopping mid-motion to see who'd been outside with Zoe.

"Lo there," Colin said as he slipped into the room.

Tom frowned and opened the door a little to look out in the corridor, checking to the left because he'd been put in a corner room.

"There's nobody else there," Zoe said while Tom pulled back into the room and shut the door again. "Promise. It's just me and Colin."

He looked between his two former colleagues, dubious of the other man's involvement in the situation even as he was busy setting things up on the desk. He didn't need to ask what Colin was doing there. He was certain that in the few short weeks since his decomm, Zoe hadn't forgotten how to read him entirely.

"There was something weird about the CCTV footage you wanted me to look up," she explained after a long moment of weathering an expectant look from Tom. "I figured Colin was less likely to go to Harry right away than Malcolm."

Tom nodded slowly. It still read as an insurance policy to him. Have Colin there just to make sure Tom didn't try anything inappropriate with Zoe. Despite the fact that Colin was a damn good shot at the firing range, when it came to any sort of physical contest, he wouldn't have stood a chance against Tom. So, if it was backup, it was a rather half-arsed plan.

"He sends his best, by the way," Colin said, lifting his head to grin brightly at Tom.

"Does he?" Tom tilted his head and looked at Zoe again, obviously asking for more, settling back into the role of Senior Officer again instead of Friend Who Needed A Big Favour.

"The weird thing about the footage piqued Colin's interest and he had to bring Malcolm in to look at it as well."

Tom's brows rose entirely of their own volition.

"Besides, he would've asked for a reason when I asked to borrow his camp bed anyway," Colin explained, turning back to his work, crawling awkwardly under the desk to plug things in.

"Why did you need Malcolm's camp bed?"

"Because we're keeping this off the record entirely and so we brought it with us so we could all spend the night in your room." Colin pulled out from under the desk. "It's in the car."

"Right. Whose car?"

"Ruth's," Zoe responded matter-of-factly.

Tom made a low noise of frustration as he rubbed his face, hand lingering at his nose.

"You do realize that none of this is helping to keep Harry from finding out, don't you?" Ruth's probability of going to Harry was uncertain. Tom knew she liked Harry a lot, but wasn't certain if she might've felt some sort of lingering obligation to himself after that mess with GCHQ. Some skewed sense of loyalty or something because he'd given her a second chance.

"Oh please," Zoe said, rolling her eyes. "Ruth spent the first week you were gone calling Adam by your name. She's not going to go chatting up Harry about your wild times in Wales."

Tom laughed softly. "Did she really?"

She smiled and nodded. "Really."

He was going to press her for more details when Colin cleared his throat politely.

Tom walked over to him, Zoe close behind. He braced his weight against the desk, half leaning over Colin to get a good angle on the screen.

"Right. So this is the footage we pulled from that area during the time you specified. It's…well I'll just show you the end bit since sitting and watching this for half an hour is…" he trailed off, uncertain of the proper adjective.

Tom watched the screen intently.

There he was on the screen, leaning against the rail. The 'weird' thing Zoe had mentioned earlier was that the footage in front of him didn't match what had happened at all.

Tom was there.

Tom's dad was not.

And it wasn't that he'd disappeared like he had when Tom had lived the moment.

No, that would be slightly less mindboggling.

Tom's dad was quite simply not there. Like he'd never even been to the bay with his son in the first place.

"You can see why I thought you might want me to bring in someone with a little more experience in this area," Zoe said dryly.

Tom nodded.

What was in front of him didn't match at all with what little information he'd given her about what to expect when viewing it.

Great, now she was going to think he'd lost it again.

"We followed you backwards," Colin said, bringing Tom back to the moment. "And whoever edited this did a really impressive job, but it's still been edited." Colin brought up some more footage, tracing Tom's apparent solo journey back to when he'd got out of the cab.

"But when they decided they'd gone far enough and we'd stop digging, well, that's where they got a bit sloppy."  
The recording of Tom playing in reverse continued until Tom got into the car first and then slid to the far side of it. Only the door remained open and when it closed, it seemingly did it of its own accord because Tom sure as hell hadn't leaned over to do the deed.

Colin was grinning like it was raining Apple products. "That is, unless cabs with automated doors are now regulation on the technologically advanced streets of Cardiff."

Tom snorted. "Can you get the original back?" he asked.

Colin's grin fell and he looked typically sheepish. It was that same look he always got when his beloved computers couldn't solve all the problems of the world.

"Unfortunately, no," he said. "Whoever did the editing also did a hell of a job covering their tracks. We can't even pinpoint where the change came from. It's like the system believes that this is an accurate representation of what happened."

Tom closed his eyes, too tired to hide his disappointment and frustration.

"Tom?" Zoe asked gently, reaching over to rest her hand on his shoulder. "What happened?"

"I don't know." Tom felt like he'd worn out those three words in the past twenty-four hours. In the past few weeks if he was being realistic.

"Alright," Zoe said, trying to find a loophole in the logic Tom was using. "What do you _think_ happened?"

Tom pushed away from the desk to go sit on the edge of the bed he'd been using. "We were watching the water," he said, trying to relate things in a manner that wasn't a debriefing. "We weren't talking or anything, just watching the water. And then there was this gust of wind and cold and I turned to look when his coffee cup hit the ground and there was nothing. He was just gone."

There was a long, tense silent moment where Colin and Zoe exchanged looks that they probably both thought Tom wasn't aware of with his head hung the way it was. He knew them too well to need to look at them to get a read on them.

"Well then," Colin said, "It's going to be a long night."

Tom looked up.

Colin grinned cheekily at him. "Probably should go get us some coffee," he teased.

Tom actually cocked a small smile. "From senior officer to tea boy?"


	5. Distance

They worked through the night.

In the weeks that followed his decommission, Tom had gotten used to getting far too much sleep. Granted, 'far too much sleep' for someone who had been in his line of work was a perfectly reasonable amount of sleep for any normal person. All right, maybe nine hours was a bit excessive, but the alcohol helped keep him asleep most nights anyway.

By the time dawn was creeping over the horizon, casting pinks and purples in the windshields of cars on the street, Tom was embarrassingly tired. Zoe and Colin were obviously a bit less sharp as well, but not nearly having the difficulty focusing that Tom was. He was mentally kicking himself for ever losing his edge and letting the emotions inherent in being this personally involved in a situation wear on him when likely, wherever his dad was, he was depending on Tom to be on top of his game.

"Tom?" Zoe asked, and by the expression on her face, one of them had been talking and he'd obviously zoned out somewhere else completely.

"Yeah, sorry." He blinked, reaching for his now lukewarm cup of coffee to try to wake himself up with the shock of the bad taste on his tongue if not the caffeine. He pushed his tongue against the roof of his mouth, nose wrinkling while he tried to get rid of that awful taste.

Zoe's brows knit, more amused than concerned, but if Tom was reading her face accurately, it was only by a bare margin that amusement won out.

She opened her mouth to say something when Colin cut off whatever sort of affection or empathy or whatever she was about to show him.

"As I was saying before you went off to Narnia, as far as we can tell from looking through all the organisations we're aware of that have not only the kind of tech to muck with CCTV footage like that but also the access to the database, it's gotta be an inside job."

Tom frowned and was quiet for a long moment trying to keep his exhaustion-heightened temper in check. "I'm sorry?"

"Well, we're certain it's at least not Section-D if that helps," Zoe offered dryly.

"Probably not the whole of Five, actually," Colin continued, "I mean, not to boast, but there's only one team in the building capable of putting together this kind of seamless editing of footage and be able to cover the tracks this well."

"Right, good to know we've ruled out you and Malcolm as suspects," Tom replied, rubbing his face tiredly. "So who do you think it might be?"

"Six has gotten pretty good lately," Colin said, turning back to look at the monitor of his laptop for a moment where he was watching a live feed of the area where the incident happened. "Here's the tricky bit about all this though," he said, and at that point, Colin sounded more than a little excited about the mystery before him and the possibility about getting his hands on shiny new software. He was almost worse than Malcolm and a bag full of shredded paper.

Tom made a gesture for him to continue while Zoe and Colin exchanged a hesitant look. "Well, you called shortly after it happened, right?"

Tom nodded.

"Well, there were only seven hours between the incident and Zoe pulling up the footage on her computer. I mean, even with the most basic programmes, it'd take a couple kids in their mum's attic months to do this in Final Cut Pro, just with the quality of the work. Aside from the curious incident with the cab, there aren't any telling pixels or anything. The shadows are all in the right place and the edges are seamless for the quality of the recording. I mean, in no spot did it look like someone just got a little too happy with the clone brush."

Tom was getting more awake by the word. "Okay, but a couple kids isn't a government organisation," he pointed out.

"Right," Colin said. "And this level of work at the speed with which they changed things would've required a team of people working on a frame by frame basis."

Tom's brow arched, oddly impressed by the duality Colin was managing with the seriousness of his tone of voice and slightly delighted expression on his face.

"Plus they'd need a huge number of reference shots particularly for the angle of the inside of the door when you get into the cab depending on where your dad was allegedly standing when he got out."

Tom turned his attention to Zoe.

"As far as we're aware," she said, pausing to take a deep breath, "Six hasn't got the man power to put to this task nor any sort of vendetta against you."

He pinched the bridge of his nose and shut his eyes tightly. "I swear if you're about to tell me that this is a CIA plot against me, I may break something."

"That's just it, though. Nobody else is as petty and technologically advanced enough to want to follow through harassing someone who hasn't even got security clearance to go to the canteen anymore much less enter the building."

He was hoping that wasn't the answer. He really was. It added up to an extent. The only man around was that American bloke and he was tired enough and jaded enough to be willing to see the conspiracy there.

Tom wasn't generally a conspiracy theorist. He dealt in facts and honestly didn't give a shite who, if anyone, was waiting in the tunnel for Diana. He groaned and flopped backwards on the bed he was sitting on. If he hadn't been burned so hard so recently by liaising more effectively than usual with the CIA, he might well not have even considered it an option. It was disturbingly reasonable to follow their logic that they wanted to make his life more than a little uncomfortable because his involvement with one of their agents had cost them a valuable asset in that particular officer.

"It's a stretch," he said. "And furthermore, it doesn't explain why they'd wait until now and how they managed to accomplish what I saw."

"Right, well as far as what you saw goes, our current working theory involves ninjas," Colin deadpanned.

Tom sat up enough to fix him with a Look.

"Look, Tom," Zoe said before Tom could deliver a biting remark to Colin, "we trust you in as much as we can trust you given…"

"The nature of my decommission, I know," Tom said, laying back down and waving a dismissive hand.

"Plus, it's not your M.O. to lie for attention," Zoe said, "So that's at least a point in your favour." Even with how foggy his brain was, he could hear the affectionate teasing in her voice. "But without any hard evidence to go on, we can't do much more than speculate and it's really difficult to speculate something rational when your claim is that he just vanished into thin air."

"That's what happened," Tom muttered.

Colin turned back to his screen, shifting camera views in the area to try to get a better angle on what was going on there currently. Zoe shifted her weight on the bed, enough to lean back and card her fingers through Tom's hair and then against the stubble on his cheek. Tom closed his eyes with the gentle affection of the motion, casual almost. He was glad for a moment that Colin was engrossed in his laptop and that there wasn't much near by save for the brass frame of a water coloured country scene for Colin to see clearly what was going on behind him.

A moment of intimacy but not privacy and no chance to push things beyond the gentle touch of one friend to another who was in rather obvious pain if you knew what to look for.

Slowly, Tom opened his eyes as her fingers lingered against his cheek. She looked so sad. Tom wondered dimly if it was because she didn't want to see him in pain or if she genuinely missed him.

The moment didn't last long, but before Zoe withdrew contact and sat up properly again, Tom could feel an odd pull towards her, a long repressed desire to kiss her just to see. They'd played husband and wife enough times over the years that they had it down to a science, but his cover kissing her cover chastely and affectionately in public for the sake of maintaining the illusion wasn't nearly the same as Tom Quinn kissing Zoe Reynolds.

He hadn't got involved with her back on the Grid if only because she was his junior officer and it wouldn't have been appropriate. That and until the incident with Joyce, Tom wasn't even certain Zoe would've been interested. He closed his eyes again, remembering the way she'd beaten her fists against his chest when he'd broken into her and Danny's flat. He remembered how good she smelled even over the rank stench of his beggar clothes and the filth caked on his body beyond that.

There'd been several long moments before Danny got home that they'd just looked at each other, stuck in a stalemate. Tom was still utterly in love with Christine, but there was a thread of desire for Zoe in that moment and Zoe who was obviously kept at bay by that love and the stink. Neither the emotion nor the smell lasted.

"We've hit a wall, Tom," Zoe said gently. He cracked open one eye to look at her. "And you need to sleep." He did need to sleep. He wasn't certain he could move more than his eyes without coming up with some sort of immense force of will.

"So do you," he pointed out.

Zoe and Colin exchanged another look. "We've…we've stayed here too long as it is," Colin said, reaching to shut his laptop. "Not that we're not absolutely fascinated by what's going on, it's just that if you want this to remain under the table, we've gotta get back to London and get some rest."

Tom did the math quickly in his head. "You've got four hours between now and when you'll be expected back on the Grid. It's going to take at least two and a half hours to get back plus time to get ready for rest, time between laying down and falling asleep, time to get ready for work and transit time from your point of origin to your destination." He closed his eyes again. "Not much time for actual sleep. May as well just go straight there and power nap in the medical centre. Save time at least. I'm assuming you both had the foresight to either bring a change of clothes or change before you left so Harry doesn't see you in yesterday's shirt and get suspicious."

He didn't have to see Colin to know he was rolling his eyes.

"If you'll recall, I have been involved in one of your ops under Harry's nose before and Colin's not an idiot," Zoe pointed out.

Tom actually smiled some.

"And anyway, it's Saturday. I've got the day for personal business and Colin's only on call if Malcolm gets bored waiting for Colin to make a move on their chess game."

"That still going on?"

"Well, I could throw the match, but Malcolm would know and never let me hear the end of it so there's no point in rushing things."

"I'd invite you both to stay here, but you seem dead set on leaving."

With a grunt of effort, Tom pushed himself sitting, tired limbs silently protesting having to move when they had been so very comfy where they were.

"For now," Zoe said.

"This is too weird for us to write off entirely, so just, be in touch if anything else happens and we'll spare as much of an eye as we can towards looking out for anything that might explain things."

He nodded, watching as Colin started meticulously packing up his equipment. His attention turned to Zoe.

"Mobile number's still the same, and even if it does change, you have other ways of contacting us."

Tom nodded. He didn't want to be alone. That was part of the problem of being unemployed and essentially unemployable unless he went to go work for Tessa and like hell he was going to sink to her level.

He was alone. Even at Five, he'd been alone, to an extent, but they all had in their own ways. Some opened up a bit more than others, but there were always things that were intentionally held back, things you needed to keep for yourself so at the end of the day, you could still look inside and see the real you. Bigger things than most people. It wasn't entirely isolated there. There were people who cared, bonds of trust that weren't easily broken.

Without his job, Tom was just a shadow trying to be something more.

"I'll let you know," he replied, standing stiffly once Colin finished packing up. He strode to the door and undid the lock so he could at least show them out that far. As he walked by, Colin squeezed his shoulder with his free hand. "Get some rest, Tom. You need it."

He continued through the door and a little ways down the passage to give Zoe and Tom a moment of privacy.

She leaned up to brush a kiss against his cheek. "We'll figure this out, Tom. I promise," she whispered before smiling sadly over her shoulder at him and disappearing to walk with Colin.

Tom shut the door, flicked off the light with a heavy hand, nearly clumsy with his lack of energy and fell onto the bed without getting under the covers, asleep before he could even finish the thought that he _should_ get under them.

Tom hadn't slept so well in what felt like months. Years, maybe. It wasn't the sleep of the just. It wasn't the sleep of someone who had just saved the lives of thousands of people without them even noticing that anything was amiss in the first place. That sleep was always plagued by the worry about what came next anyway, by what other threat was lurking in the shadows, waiting to fill the void left by the one just taken care of. It was the sleep of the utterly exhausted, a deep, dreamless sleep. He wasn't prone to tossing and turning naturally, trained to remain as still as possible in order to be as unmemorable as possible and to be peripherally aware of his surroundings even while his body was cycling through the restorative process. He was still used to shifting ever so slightly while his body searched for greater comfort wherever he was.

That night, he woke up in the exact same position he'd fallen asleep in. The sun was streaming in through his windows. There was a steady hum of traffic outside, and most remarkably, it was well into afternoon. Tom groaned, fighting off his body's desire for more sleep. He was comfortable where he was. That comfort came at a price, of course. That price wasn't being paid by him directly anymore despite whatever the hell was going on in Cardiff's seedy underbelly. There were so many people paying for him, paying for him and everyone else in the country and abroad. Some of them had names and faces that he knew. Some of them even had names and faces that the general public could find out.

His dad shouldn't have been one of those people. His dad was just a headmaster for Christ's sake. He'd taught maths before that too. It'd helped shape Tom, maths. There were lots of ways to get an answer with numbers and a problem to solve, though he wasn't nearly as good at working with them as say Malcolm or Colin were, he did well enough. The thing about numbers was that at the end of the problem, there was only one right answer for the most part.

The world of numbers was as black and white as things could get. Tom appreciated that. It was part of why his contingency plan of employment was at an accountancy firm after he'd finished university.

A normal person might've regretted the path his life had taken. Things would've been so much easier if he'd just taken the conventional route.

Tom couldn't help but hope that he'd saved more lives than he'd ruined over the years. His job had been worth it even though he was rapidly realising that he was ruined for anything else.

Five wasn't a job that you just stopped doing. It was a life.

In his state of half-sleep, Tom could remember a conversation he and his dad had when he was a boy. He could feel the memory of asking, but not hear his small voice, couldn't possibly recall what he'd sounded like at that age. He couldn't have been more than six.

It wasn't the first time he'd asked about his mother, but it was the first moment he remembered asking about her.

The memory was too far back, too faded for him to accurately recall what it was he'd asked, exactly. Perhaps it was prompted by a discussion of what Tom wanted to be when he grew up. He wasn't exactly certain. Despite the fuzziness of his own words, he could hear his father's answer as clear as day.

"She wouldn't have cared what you decided to do with your life so long as you lived it, my boy."

He'd stopped living for too long. He'd drowned his sorrows and lack of purpose in alcohol and while he was resolutely refusing to have that become a problem, it wasn't living. It was waiting to die. There was a difference. What was worse, in what he was now reading as an attempt by his dad to let them both live and find something of the bond they had before Five drove Tom even further inside himself than he had been already, his father had been taken from him.

He kept his eyes closed, still aware of the sun on his face. It was a pleasant sort of warmth when he'd felt left out in the cold for so long lately.

He replayed the footage Colin brought over from the night before in his head, replayed the memory he had of what had happened.

There was one thing he foolishly hadn't investigated.

The bloody shop the American had gone into.

Colin had said something about it being just pamphlets and maps and information and the like, nothing at all unusual or remarkable.

From the outside the shop seemed like it was too small to be anything significant, but Tom knew, had learned the hard way, never to discount something simply because it seemed harmless enough.

He cracked open one eye and looked at the clock on the nightstand. It wasn't too late in the day yet. He could pop out and get some food and then come back to come up with a plan of action and perhaps figure out what kind of tools he needed to improvise if he was going to do what he was already considering doing.

He closed his eye again and took a deep breath before shifting his weight to push himself up.

That was when the wholly jarring sound of his mobile vibrating across the wood of the stand drew his attention instead.

In retrospect, Tom really should've checked the screen before he answered, but he was hoping it was Zoe or Colin. Not that he was expecting them, of course, not so soon and with other things to take care of that day that presumably had nothing to do with either national security or mysteriously vanishing parents.

"Yeah," he said groggily.

"Down for a nap, old man?" came Christine's voice on the other end, partially teasing, but mostly nonplussed.

"Not exactly," he grumbled, forcing as much of the remaining lag out of his voice as he could even if his eyes still protested the idea of being open just yet. "Thought it was my turn to call you."

"I got bored," she replied. He could hear her heels clicking on concrete in the background. The unawake parts of him wondered what she was wearing, if maybe it was that black blouse he liked so much when they were their own little cland-op.

"Told you I'd call when I was done in Cardiff."

"And you also said you wouldn't have the patience to deal with bright and sunny Wales for longer than a couple of days. We're out of a couple and into a few now."

"It actually is sunny today," he muttered, turning his face away from the window.

"If I wanted a weather report, I'd google it and not spend more money on international calls."  
Tom grunted softly as he finally pushed to sitting, swinging feet over the edge of the bed as he rubbed his eye with the heel of his hand. "Then what do you want?" he said, obviously bored and annoyed by dancing around the subject.

"I have a proposition for you," she said simply. The heel clicks stopped and Tom could swear he heard a wooden bench shifting under her weight.

"Not interested," he said firmly. He wondered if she was still in DC. Was it cherry blossom season there? He couldn't remember. Flowering trees were generally fairly low on his priority list.

"I haven't even made it yet," she countered. "At least hear me out."

"No."

"Why?"

"Because you sold me out to Oliver Mace," he replied simply. "Because you knowingly wore a wire to our meet and then lied to my face about it. Because you almost left me as a ruined man, almost helped make it worse." And because some of your old colleagues might just be making my life a hell of a lot harder than it should be. He didn't say that last bit. If the CIA was involved somehow, for whatever reason, it wasn't likely that Christine would hold any sway when it came to stopping what was going on.

"I didn't have a choice," she said firmly. It wasn't an apology and she didn't offer any further explanation than that. More often than not, she was too good for those tactics. When a thing happened, it happened and giving reasons unprompted usually stank of excuse making. Christine was at least honourable enough to know how far to push that envelope before it read as something else entirely.

"You asked why," Tom pointed out. "I told you." He was quiet for a moment before speaking again. "And don't say you didn't have a choice. There is always a choice."

She sighed heavily. "Fair enough. When are you leaving Cardiff?"

"Eventually. I don't know. Haven't planned that far ahead yet," he said, shifting to standing as he padded heavily towards the bath. Maybe if he splashed some water on his face, he could wake up a bit easier.

"Right. Well, if you're in the mood to hear me out when you go home, call me, okay?" she asked, voice shifting to just the barest edge of softness, something anyone without years of practice reading her would probably miss entirely.

"Okay." He doubted he would.

"Tom?" she said.

"Yeah?"

"I miss you."

Tom closed his eyes, bracing his free hand on the edge of the counter. "Don't." And with that, he ended the call and started about the process of getting ready for the day even if he wasn't planning on going very far from the hotel until well after dark.


	6. Clandestine Operations

Five had trained Tom well, but no amount of knowledge of the proper procedure helped when he was working on his own. There was no surveillance team in a van round the corner. There was no comforting voice of his team in his ear. There wasn't even a number he could call anymore if things really went to shit and he needed a safe house.

One of the first things he'd been taught was not to go into a place without telling at least one other person where you were going. Anything could happen out there, and if you ignored every single other bit of protocol, you still might have a chance of getting out alive if someone knew where you were before you got yourself killed.

The thing about being unemployed was that he had no one else to call without raising some sort of suspicion.   
His gut told him there was something weird with that shop on the bay and he was going to investigate even if nobody had his back. He imagined Zoe would try to talk him out of it if he called her. Colin and Malcolm would probably not be interested and Danny would just think he'd lost another vital piece of his sanity.

So there was Tom in the dead of night, picking the lock of the shop like the government had trained him to do.

He was sure there would be some kind of alarm on it. It'd been too strategically designed to look like it was about to collapse if you looked at it the wrong way. Not that it was obvious, of course, but to someone who was used to looking at things to see what was wrong with them, well, there wasn't much use in hiding it.

The lock gave surprisingly easy and Tom pushed quietly inside the main room of the shop. It was exactly like Colin said. Pamphlets. Nothing was particularly outwardly interesting about it. His eyes slowly adjusted to the darkness of the room, taking in as much as he could. There was a beaded curtain off to his left that probably led to storage of some sort. The truly odd thing about this was that from what he could see of the room, there were none of the hallmarks of traditional security.

He flipped the lock to the main door behind him, not relishing the idea of someone trying to come in after him.

Slowly, quietly, Tom moved about the room, listening carefully for any sounds of anyone in the part of the shop he couldn't see, hardly daring to breathe in the process.

Tom slipped around behind the counter, glancing at the shell of a PC that was several years out of date already.

He parted the curtain near the centre, ducking through into the pantry.

The thing about beaded curtains was that they were a bitch for stealth. You touched one strand and the whole lot of them moved, making it obvious where you'd gone.

Tom wanted to spend as little time in that pantry as possible. There was nothing interesting in it, barely enough room to move never mind actually set up a front for something. There was still something weird about this place, something about it that was simply hiding in plain sight that he couldn't quite put a finger on just yet.

There was a door at the end of the pantry, which Tom supposed really made it a corridor with shelves, but that was just debating semantics at that point. He opened the door, trying to keep control over the build in adrenaline in his system and the rapid-fire pound of his pulse.

A toilet.

Tom stared at it and the accompanying sink. He could see handles for the requisite cleaning supplies on the other side of the unit, a pyramid of paper in the corner opposite the bin.

He relaxed as he looked at the completely innocuous room.

That relaxation only lasted for a moment when Tom heard the distinct sound of hydraulics moving behind him. His hand tightened on the handle of the door and he realized suddenly that whatever he'd just gotten himself into, he was massively fucked.

Quickly and quietly, Tom slid into the room, shutting the door with a barely audible click behind him and then reaching to turn the lock there too. He held his breath, hoping that whoever was out there wouldn't notice.

That wasn't likely at all, of course, he realized belatedly, because of that sodding beaded curtain.

He listened harder. Footsteps drew nearer and paused behind the desk. Tom could almost feel whoever was out there listening just as intently as he was.

The moment of listening ended with the cocking of a gun.

The footsteps continued forward, towards the beaded curtain and beyond that where Tom was hiding pressed up against the wall in the toilet, next to the door while he scanned the room for anything other than his own body that he could use for a weapon.

The curtain made a soft noise as it was pushed aside and again as it fell back into place behind whoever was coming close. It almost sounded like a rain stick or dried beans being poured into a bowl.

Tom held his breath.

The footsteps stopped just outside the door and he could hear whoever it was lean a little against it, pressing their ear against the wood, practically daring Tom to breathe.

He refused to.

The steady weight of a hand pressed down against the handle. It moved, but just barely. The lock held for the time being, but was a dead give away to the fact that there was someone hiding in the room.

"I know you're in there," came the voice of the American who Tom had met two nights before. "Look, either you unlock the door and come with me and we make this easy or I have to break the handle off and get even more upset. Up to you."  
Tom frowned, but didn't move.

"You know, the acoustics in here are amazing," the man continued, "so I know that you know that I'm standing out here with a gun. And I'm pretty sure that if you were armed, I would've heard you going for yours already."  
Tom let out the breath he was holding as quietly as possible, body screaming for fresh oxygen.

"Unlock the door." The words were more command than Tom was expecting, but he wasn't one to simply do what he was told simply because he was told to do it.

"I don't want to hurt you. I just want to talk. Promise. I've got some questions for you." At that, Tom couldn't help but hold back a small snort.

There was another pause.

"Please?"

Tom had made a lot of bad decisions in his life, too many to count, really. What was one more when he'd come this far already?

"Uncock the gun," he said to the man.

The American did so and if Tom's ears could be trusted, he'd even gone so far as to holster it too.

Tom closed his eyes and said a silent prayer to whatever god was listening before he flipped the lock on the door.

"Good," said the American, "now open it. Slowly."

Another long moment passed before Tom reached for the handle and pushed down on it, pulling it towards the inside of the room and then letting inertia take it open the rest of the way.

The American's hand reached around the doorframe and flipped the light switch without even looking.

Tom expected more orders. He expected this obviously well trained man to try to talk him out from where he was pressed against the wall out of his line of sight.

What happened was entirely different. The man walked into the room and looked at Tom, utterly nonplussed. He leaned back against the open door, arms crossed over his chest, butt of his gun in its holster just a few inches from where his hand was.

"You just don't give up, do you?"

Tom watched him warily.

When he didn't respond, the man continued. "Not like I blame you, I mean, someone with your background allegedly sees something weird, of course you're going to investigate as much as you can."

Tom arched a brow, but didn't ask where the guy'd got his information.

The American pushed off the door. "Relax, Tom," he said, reaching forward to clap a hand on his shoulder. "I'm not here to hurt you or tell Harry or call the cops or anything."

Tom's gaze flicked from the hand back up to the man's face.

"Then what are you here for?" he asked.

The hand stayed where it was, even squeezed slightly. "To offer you a job," he said simply.

It would seem that this was just a night for expectations to go right out the window. "Come again?"

"A job," the man said slowly as he pulled his hand back, "Employment. Generally something sought after by people who don't have it."

Tom just barely resisted the urge to roll his eyes. "Not interested," he said, pushing off from the wall and turning to leave.

The man put his arm firmly in Tom's path, hand gripping the doorframe tightly. "But you haven't even heard the offer yet." He flashed Tom a bright smile, meant to be charming but coming off oddly lacking.

"Fine," Tom replied, moving away from the arm and the door, pacing the room a bit. "What's the job?"

"Save the world," the man said simply.

Tom barked a laugh. "Oh the company must be getting desperate if they're using that line. Was this your plan all along? Track me to Cardiff, abduct my father and then try to recruit me? Next up you're going to use him as a bargaining chip. Tell me where he is and promise his safe return to normalcy if I say yes to whatever it is you want me to do, right? I've been through training too. I know how this works."

The man pursed his lips and tilted his head just slightly to the side. "Close, but not quite. I'll tell you what took him, if you want, but I'm afraid getting him back isn't an option and even if it were, there wouldn't be any return to life as usual, sorry."

Tom paused in his pacing and glared at the American. "Talk," he said lowly.

The American arched a brow. "Funny. I'm the one with the weapon and you're the one giving orders."

"You're the one who wants something harder to get than information," Tom pointed out.

"Fair enough." The man pushed off the open door and shifted to block it, to keep Tom boxed in while he spoke. "Your dad was taken by a fluctuation in the activity of a rift in time and space. That's part of what we do here, study the rift, see if we can find any patterns in it. So far no luck, but maybe eventually. Anyway, your dad was in exactly the wrong place at exactly the wrong time and now he could be anywhere and more importantly, anywhen."

Tom narrowed his eyes. He'd gotten good at reading people over the years. He'd made a few mistakes recently, sure, but he was only human. This guy didn't seem to be taking the piss.

"You're saying that aliens abducted my dad," Tom said, raising one hand, holding it sideways accusingly while he spoke.

"Not aliens," the American corrected, "a rift. Powerful energy, but not aliens."

It was complete lunacy was what it was.

Tom dropped his hand and then raised it again half in defeat. "Why am I supposed to believe you?"

"Because you were there," he replied, closing in on Tom earnestly. "You saw it."

"I don't know what I saw and thanks to you, nobody else can verify that," Tom replied, refusing to back up into a corner.

"That was necessary, unfortunately. We listened in on your call after the incident and, well, I'm sure you can understand the need to keep things secret. The world's not quite ready for this, I'm afraid."

"You…how the hell did you manage that?"

The American grinned broadly, but it was more disturbing than it was comforting. "Let me show you." He turned and walked from the room, almost like he expected Tom to follow without any sort of protest.

Tom hung back for a moment before he heard the hydraulics start to work again and he moved quickly out of the toilet to catch up with the American.

If the numbers on the walls were to be believed, they were in the fourth sub-level, whatever that meant since there hadn't been doors to the other three.

A large gear rolled out of the way and Tom looked inside through the opening before hesitantly stepping forward.

Tom tried to take in all of it, but there was just so much. The amount of tech in the huge space put the Grid to shame.

The American grinned even more broadly at him, putting an arm around his shoulder. "Welcome to Torchwood."

A clap of the American's hand against his back signaled the end of just standing there staring at the place. Tom at least had the good sense not to gape.

"This way," the American said, leading Tom past workstations and gadgets that would've made Malcolm make a very un-Malcolm-like noise and then not at all apologise for it.

They went into an office and the American shut the door lightly behind them.

"Why is nobody else there?" Tom asked, and then immediately felt foolish for it.

The American gave him a Look.

"I mean, why are _you_ here when nobody else is?"

The man smiled almost lewdly. "Easier to live without being noticed if you're in a secret underground base."

Right. Tom wasn't even going to ask. "So I suppose if I made a phone call and had someone dig up information on you, I probably wouldn't get anything."

"Probably not. Reminds me." He leaned forward from where he was sitting on the other side of his desk, extending his hand amiably. "Captain Jack Harkness."

Tom shook his hand, nodding firmly and not bothering to introduce himself in turn since Jack obviously already knew who he was.

"Quiet type, are you?"

"I'm just trying to figure out why you want me for this," Tom replied, crossing his hands over his lap. "You're aware of my unemployment and so are probably equally aware of why I was decommissioned."

Jack grinned and this time there was something almost charming about it, like a little kid who was actually excited about something. "That's exactly why I want you."

"I don't follow."

"The whole situation, Tom. You refused to destroy a man just to get the job done. You refused to let it dictate your morality any longer. You're human and you're obviously brilliant and capable and," Jack's smile turned a little lewd again, "handsome-"

"Also not interested, thanks," Tom replied.

"In the job or me? Because I'll be terribly put out if it's the former."

"You."

Jack nodded. "Fair enough. I'll try not to cross that line again, but you'll understand that it's rather difficult to bring up a harassment suit on an organisation that doesn't exist."

Tom snorted. "What's the job?"

"Told you," Jack said, leaning forward, resting his forearms on his slightly cluttered desk. "Save the world."

"And what makes you think I want to bounce from one life of secrets and lies to another?"

"You don't know anything else anymore and you can't just switch that off."

Tom hated this guy immediately for just how Right he seemed to be, how well he knew Tom already.

"If you want," Jack continued, "I could call Harry Pearce, have him talk you into it instead, but that might get a little awkward."

"A little?" Tom muttered, reaching one broad hand up to rub his face.

"It pays better than Five ever did, but we both know that this kind of job is never about the money."

Tom nodded. And he realized that the only issue he was truly having with this whole opportunity landing in his lap (aside from the fact that his dad was apparently _gone_ and not coming back ever) was that he'd have to move to bloody Cardiff.

On the bright side, that would save him from having to initiate contact with Christine ever again. He had said that he'd call her when he was done in Cardiff, and clearly, he wasn't done yet.

"Okay," he said, dropping his hand in a small sweeping gesture of defeat. "I'm going to need some time to pack up my life and move it out here, sell the flat in London and all that."

"Of course," Jack replied, settling into an easy smile. "You've got a week."

Tom's brows rose incredulously. "I'm supposed to uproot everything in a week when my dad's just been…do you have any idea what kind of paperwork is going to be involved when his neighbours notice he's been in Cardiff for an awfully long while with his son?"

"Paperwork's the easy part. We'll take care of that while you're packing. Tosh is great at that sort of thing. Should've had her do the CCTV instead of Suzie come to think of it, but that just means that I have to tell Harry to call your friends off the hunt."

Tom frowned deeply. "Forgive me if I don't believe that Harry's going to cave to your whims that easily."

"Probably not, but the DG will. Besides, Harry can distract himself from being ordered around like that by lecturing about not making contact with decommissioned officers."

And then he'd really never see Zoe again, never hear her voice, her laugh, and never have the quiet surprise of her lips against his cheek.

"A week," Tom said softly, "suppose you've got a lead on real estate too?"

"You'd be surprised where we're connected."

"No, something tells me I really won't." Tom said dryly.


	7. Enough

As he left what he'd been told was called 'The Hub', Tom shifted his collar against the wind, gaze up at the almost impossibly clear sky. Jack's tour of the place had been thorough and Tom had done his best to memorise as many details as possible. Everything he saw only furthered his belief (strange as it felt to have it) that Jack was telling the truth about aliens, about the rift.

He wondered to himself what all was up there. It was impossible, or nearly so, he supposed, that he was going to get to see any of it, but as he looked at the sky, able to see a scant few stars even with the light pollution from the city, he almost wanted to.

That would be a true fresh start for him, but what kind of life would he be living if he were truly an alien to whatever inhabitants of whatever planet he happened to land on?

He would still be a spook. It was the sort of job that never left you, even if you left it. Or, Tom mused ruefully, were decommissioned in front of two junior officers you'd loved in your own way and a sleeper agent who was in too deep.  
And Adam Sodding Carter.

There had been conversation, of course, after the tour once Tom had found his feet again. Conversation about how the hell Jack knew Harry and how the hell they'd managed to remain this clandestine this long.

Jack just smiled that impossibly infuriating smile and said that when Victoria wanted something done a certain way, it would be done that way until someone thought to change it.

Tom didn't know what that meant, but he was certainly not amused.

He stuck his hands in his pockets and instead of hailing a cab back to the hotel, decided to walk the couple kilometres.

Wherever his dad was now, whatever happened to him, Tom wanted to think that he was finally on the adventure he'd never had the courage to do on his own. It was better than the alternative.

And for now, Tom would work for Torchwood. He'd be the field agent or whatever Jack wanted him to be. He'd been decidedly unclear about what the job expectations were. Tom got the impression that Jack was rather vague about a lot of things.

When he got back to his room, he looked at his life there. His suitcase was half unpacked and his dad's was still neatly standing against the other bed where he'd left it.

Almost unconsciously, his hand slid into his pocket, curling around his mobile. He pulled it out and looked at it, turning the decidedly low-tech gadget over in his hand so he could flip it open. He thumbed into his recent calls and decided that though it was dangerous, he wanted to hear Zoe's voice one last time.

He hit call.

The phone rang twice before the call connected. This time, he wasn't greeted by her laughter, but rather silence for a moment.

Tom broke the silence. "I can hear you breathing," he said softly, trying to hearken back to their earlier conversation.

"I know," she replied softly.

"I wanted to say something before…" Before Harry caught on or got sick of letting Tom have these moments because he already knew.

"You don't have to," she said. There was comfort and understanding in her voice. But even if she knew what it was he needed to say, he still had to say it.

"Yes, I do."

"Okay."

He was quiet for several long moments, just mulling over the proper tone of voice to use, not wanting to sound too desperate when he said, quite simply, "I love you."

Zoe didn't gasp, didn't make any sort of audible sign that she'd been surprised to actually hear the words from him. In fact, if he couldn't still hear the steady sound of her breathing, he would've thought that she had hung up on him.

"Zoe?"

"I'm here."

"Okay."

They fell silent, just listening to the even pattern of each other's breathing.

"Tom?"

"Yeah?"

A long pause before she said, just as quietly as they'd both seemed to approach the whole conversation. "I love you too."

A small smile pulled at the corner of Tom's mouth. He closed his eyes, remembering the feel of her soft lips against the stubble on his cheek the last time he'd seen her. The last time he'd probably ever see her.

"Tom?"

He made a soft questioning noise.

"I have to go, I can hear Danny coming home."

He squeezed his eyes shut. "I'm not ready for that." It hurt, he realized quite suddenly and painfully. He knew how this conversation was going to end, but he wasn't ready for it anymore than he was ready to lose his dad so abruptly.

"Me either," she confessed, "but this is how it is."

In the background, he could hear the door to their flat opening, the jingle of Danny's keys.

"Goodbye," she said, and Tom heard a slight waver in her voice, could almost feel it, almost picture a slight sheen to her eyes while she held back tears.

"Goodbye."

She ended the call and Tom pulled the phone away to look at how long that had taken.

Ten minutes and fifty-seven seconds, all told.

"I love you," he whispered again and set about getting ready for bed. Danny was probably too busy bitching about his own day to notice anything subtly wrong with her. He padded to the bath to brush his teeth and wash his face. When he finished, he changed his clothes and shut off the lights before curling up to sleep.

As a child, Tom had a stuffed dog. Its name was Ralph, but he couldn't remember who'd given it that name. His mother bought it for him before he was born, one of the few things that she'd gotten a chance to pick out special for him that he could keep past infancy. Anytime he felt sad or scared or ill, he would cuddle that dog to his chest and pretend he wasn't crying silently into it as he wished his mum could be there to stroke his hair and tell him that it would be all right.

He wanted that dog there so badly then.

He wanted the childhood he never could've had because she'd died before he'd been old enough to remember anything about her, before she'd even been allowed to hold him.

Tom clutched a pillow to his chest and finally, finally let everything that had been building for so very long come to a head and he cried. He took great silent gulps of air, letting it all out because nobody else could see. He wished he'd had the comfort of religion in that moment, wished he could truly, honestly believe that there was a heaven where his mum was watching over him. Where she was proud of the man he'd become.

He cried for his life with Five that was gone. He cried for his dad, suddenly and abruptly taken from him without a chance to say goodbye. He cried for the goodbye he just had with Zoe. He cried for his mum, something he hadn't done since he was a boy and one particularly cruel child had said that he'd murdered her just by being born. He cried for Ralph, who was probably still in his dad's office in the house he'd grown up in. He cried for Christine, even though she'd betrayed him because he'd loved her still. He cried until he couldn't cry anymore, until his body was too exhausted to allow him to stay awake.

The next day, he'd start down the path for a new life.

A fresh beginning that part of him still wasn't sure he deserved.

No more boxes.

No more legends.

He'd be Tom Quinn for as long as he could.

And that was enough.


End file.
